


Absence

by missclairebelle



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 11:05:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14872587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Pulled just right, a single loose thread can unravel a tapestry. In November 1951, two everyday things managed to pull that thread, and along with it the rug out from under me. First was my daughter’s screaming meltdown during my fourth trip to the market in search of ingredients for her birthday cake.  Second was my need for a checkbook to purchase a birthday cake for my daughter when baking seemed futile.  It was a Tuesday when the tapestry of my world began to unravel.





	1. Recall

**Chapter One**

**_Recall_ **

**_22 November 1951_ **

**_Boston_ **

****

Pulled just right, a single loose thread can unravel a tapestry. In November 1951, two everyday things managed to pull that thread, and along with it the rug out from under me. First was my daughter’s screaming meltdown during my fourth trip to the market in search of ingredients for her birthday cake.  Second was my need for a checkbook to purchase a birthday cake for my daughter when baking seemed futile.  It was a Tuesday when the tapestry of my world began to unravel.  

 

It was the day before Brianna’s third birthday and two days before Thanksgiving. I had been trying (in vain) to conquer two culinary feats: a triple-layer red velvet birthday cake (cream cheese icing and all) and a cranberry orange sauce.  The cake, for Brianna’s birthday party, had been an unmitigated disaster.  

The idea had come about one night over a pile of roast beef and boiled potatoes made by our housekeeper.  Frank, eyes glued to the single television show he followed with unflagging devotion (Dragnet), had laughed when I commented that I was going to attempt a homemade cake – _with piped icing so sickly sweet that it would make our teeth ache_ – for Bree’s birthday.  

“Sure you are,” he had chuckled, using his knife to neatly arrange a pile of green peas on his fork. He looked awfully smug about my lack of domesticity for someone who had barely made his way home in time to see his daughter put to bed and was eating reheated leftovers hours after his family had finished eating. While my declaration, made with _Ladies’ Home Journal_ in hand, had been half-hearted, Frank’s mirthless, sarcastic laugh made me determined.

I was going to bake my own daughter’s birthday cake.  I couldn’t be _that_ horrible of a homemaker as to be incapable of baking, right? Baking was _a science_ , the publication had promised – the quality of the results dependent on meticulous measuring, sifting, and ensuring an oven at a proper temperature. I was a _combat_ _nurse_ god dammit, detail and precision were imprinted on every molecule of my being.

Since my declaration of intent to bake the cake, I had thrown at least six round cakes of varying inedibility into the trash – charred, gloopy in the middle, flat-as-a-pancake, split down the center, sunk in the middle, and stuck in the (apparently insufficiently lubricated) tin.  

As if this vengeance _I_ _’ll-fucking-show-you-asshole_ cake was not enough, I had also promised to make a cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving.  Frank had committed us as guests at a Thanksgiving meal hosted by the collective population of expat Harvard faculty. When I had confessed to the wife of one of our hosts that I was not particularly skilled in the kitchen, she had suggested bringing a “simple cranberry sauce.” The cranberry sauce was going about as well as the cake, which is to say not bloody going at all.

And thus, at the middle of November, on an unseasonably warm day, I wrapped my toddler in a winter coat and walked the three blocks from our home to the market for more cake and cranberry sauce ingredients.  Bree, having not napped, was relatively pleasant and chatty for the short walk  – pointing out two dogs, a policeman, a cardinal perched to take flight on the edge of a mailbox, and squatting only once in a reach for a handful of melting, sludge-stained, yellow snow. “No Bree,” I had admonished her in a firm tone  touched by a smile.  Her attention had been easily redirected by a simple, “Oh look, sweetheart, look at that big dog!”

I must have looked as frazzled scooping loose cranberries into a bag as I felt because a kind woman asked if I needed help.  While we talked ( _cut back on the orange zest, dear, it’s really important_ ), Brianna had wrenched her hand free from my own and charged a display of the most beautiful waxy green apples.  Surprised, I stayed rooted to the spot, listening to my cranberry sauce savior’s commentary on the need to _really, really stir the sugar until it dissolves_.  

Bree’s chubby, still-baby-like fingers gracefully plucked one apple from the stack and raised it to her mouth.  She licked the circumference with zeal and threw it to the ground with a _whack_. Stunned, I still did not move or say anything until she made for another apple.  I saw the top of the perfectly stacked pile begin to wobble and sprang into action.

“BREE!” I shrieked in a voice I could hardly recognize, dropping my basket of eggs, flour, sugar, and butter for cake number seven.  The eggs, in a chorus, made a crunching sound as the basket hit the floor.  

At least a dozen women, including my cranberry sauce savior, turned to see what the commotion was. I was to Bree’s side in three long strides and caught her hand as it strained for her next apple.  Bree’s wrist was warm and soft, yielding in my hand. At my touch she immediately let out the most heart-wrenching howl that I had ever heard, including those I had committed to memory and made by dying men over two wars ( _the Second World War and… Scotland_ ).  From the sound breaking free from her tiny throat, it was as if I had cracked her bird-like bones in my grasp. I knew I hadn’t – I had a firm hold on her, but not even tight enough to constitute a firm grip. For a moment Bree’s cry sickened me and then horror washed over me as she continued to scream.

I glanced around, hoping to see a friendly face of understanding.   _She was still only two for Christ’s sake_ (they didn’t need to know she was only two for another fifteen-or-so hours) _._   The looks on the faces of the women surrounding us ranged from ‘ _I understand_ _’_ to ‘ _what a failure in parenting_.’ Most were in the latter camp.  My eyebrows knit together.  Fat tears rolled down Bree’s cheeks, catching in her eyelashes and on her quivering lower lip. An unbroken string of snot pooled at the cupid’s bow I kissed every night before bed. Spit rolled over the curve of her baby soft chin and down her neck. 

Bree twisted from my hand for a second time, throwing herself down onto the tiled floor, flopping until she was onto her back.  Her small fists thumped the ground and her screams echoed off of the floor and the walls. I stood dumbly, staring and praying that her fit would last only moments until she tired or forgot the indignity of my not allowing her master plan to come to fruition. After a few moments, and after hearing someone mutter “ _for god_ _’s sake, do something_ ,” I crouched next to her, placing a hand on her small shoulder.  

“Bree, stop, please,” I said as firmly as I could, feeling the blush rise up from under the collar of my blouse.  Her wails only intensified at my request.  

“ _PLEASE!_ ” someone mocked incredulously. “ _The mother says **please**._ ” 

The emphasis on _mother_ communicated the speaker’s thoughts well enough for me to begin to blush. For some reason I cared what this _stranger_ in the market thought.  I raised my voice slightly, attempting a sternness I had not yet had occasion to master with my daughter.  The Terrible Twos had not been so terrible.  Frank and I had frequently mused, without knocking on wood, that Bree was a _good girl_ , so well behaved.  We had given ourselves probably far too much unearned credit for her good behavior. And here on our last day of her second year, I was learning the lesson for our hubris.  

“Brianna Ellen Randall.  Stop it this instant.”

“Ma’am, yah gonna have ta pay fah the eggs,” a voice said from behind me. I turned and shot a look at the produce boy ( _a child_ himself, probably no older than fifteen) a look that could kill.  I did not respond, attempting to slip my arm under Bree who was by now writhing on the floor like an eel out of water.

“She’s probably one of those _working mothers_ ,” someone muttered.

I gritted my teeth, not looking to see who sourced the unhelpful commentary.  “Come along, sweetheart,” I muttered, grasping the lapel of Bree’s coat.  Her thirty-one pounds of squirming weight was proving impossible to wrangle in my awkward, high-heeled crouch. 

I felt the blush in my neck rise to my jawline. I glanced around the produce department.  Normally, I could not have cared less about others’ assessments of my parenting, but today I was shaken by the looks I was getting.  This seeming failure at parenting, as telegraphed by the dozen-or-so judging eyes, on top my disastrous attempts at the cake and the stupid fucking cranberries, made me crave a graceful end to this spectacle. I did not want to be fodder for family stories over turkey and dressing. (“ _And then the silly woman, couldn_ _’t even cook cranberries, asked her daughter to PLEASE stop! It was just unbelievable what these young parents think passes for acceptable behavior, really._ ”)

It was clear Bree was not going to be a willing participant in our evacuation from the market.  I brought myself fully down to my knees so I could get my arms under her middle.  

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. I felt my stockings tear free of my stocking belt and begin to roll down my right thigh.  When I finallly had hold of her, Bree immediately buried her face in my neck and I brought my hand to her mass of red curls, attempting to soothe her.  I was more concerned with ending the tantrum than making it clear to my not-yet-three-year-old that licking of apples was unacceptable. “Shhh…”

“Ma’am, the eggs.”

“I will pay the 50 cents for the bloody eggs,” I snapped, feeling Bree’s snot and tears and spit mix in a cocktail of bodily fluids on my blush-warmed neck. Bree nestled down further into my chest, her face under the lapel of my coat as her sobs were broken by hiccups.  For good measure, under my breath, I added a _Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ._

I left the market with my pocketbook 50 cents lighter, without any ingredients for cake number seven, and nothing for the cranberries.

I carried Bree the entire way home.  Her even breathing and the gentle smacking sounds against the mound of my clothed breast meant she was fast asleep.  I did not dare to wake her.  Once back home, I laid Bree down in her crib.  She continued her slumber.  From her easy sleep, I knew the lack of an afternoon nap was the clear cause of our disastrous outing to the market. Sleeping, Bree wiggled until she had her back towards the wall and draped an arm over her forehead.

My heart leapt into my throat.  She looked like Jamie, red hair in messy waves over her forehead.  Her brow furrowed for a moment and her fingers curled into a tight, tiny fist. I held my breath. Just as quickly as the interruption caused the worry in her brow to appear, she relaxed again.  Her lips parted, upturned into a slight smile, and her fingers relaxed.  Jamie was always taken under by a good, needed sleep in the same way - a momentary hitch, face screwed up in concentration, fist clenching all before releasing with a long sigh. I took a moment to feel the slicing sting of heartache before tucking a blanket under her chin.  

I let my hand rest over her heart, trying to remember how to say _good night_ in Gaelic.  

It was a phrase Jamie had painstakingly worked with me on for hours one night – smiling and manipulating the corners of my mouth with his thumbs, guiding my teeth, and running his fingers over the tip of my tongue as if it would at all help me get the right inflection to my voice.  I could remember the feeling of pride when Jamie finally approved of my pronunciation, enthusiastically kissing me until my lungs ached for breath.  

I could remember the way the firelight threw a shadow over his face when he sat back and said he loved me.  I could remember the way we had settled on a pile of quilts on the floor that night. We were close to one another, hands resting on each other – intimate, but not sexual.  I remembered that Jamie fell asleep first, his face resting on my neck.  My free hand fluttered up to the same spot on my neck; it was covered in the drying fluids borne of our daughter’s tantrum.  I attempted (and failed) to remember the weight of his touch.  We had slept like that there in front of the fire on a mountain of quilts, his warm breath an even in-out-in-out-in-out against my clavicle.

I could remember all of this, but I could not remember how to say  _good night_ and it frustrated me. 

“Sleep tight, our sweet lass,” I finally sighed, having counted sixty beats of her heart without remembering the words I expected her _father_ , the one whose love created her, would say to her as she drifted away. 

I shut the door to Bree’s bedroom partway and crossed the hall to the washroom.  I discarded my dress to the chair in the corner, balled my destroyed stockings into the wastepaper basket, and scrubbed the invisible evidence of Bree’s tears from my neck with warm water and a bar of soap. Drying my neck, I finally remembered.

_Oidhche mhath._

_Oidhche mhath._

_Oidhche mhath._

I let the words run through my head and tested them in a quiet voice, vowing not to forget before making my way to the bedroom to change. 

Once in fresh clothes, I poured myself the slightest whisper of scotch and ran a finger through the bakeries section of the telephone directory. On my fifth phone call, I found a bakery that had a cake prepared and available.  It was going to be chocolate, not red velvet. The cake currently said “ _Happy Thanksgiving_ ” and, according to the bakery’s owner, had a fat turkey clad in a pilgrim’s hat on a pile of leaves piped onto the corner.  

I was sold, even though the promise of Frank’s _I told you so_ smirk made me want to tear my hair out at the roots.  The only problem was time.  I glanced at my wristwatch. I had exactly thirty-nine minutes to get Bree up, make it six blocks to the bakery, and pick up the cake. I steeled myself against the task. I may have been unable to bake or cook, or stop Bree from having an unholy fit in the market, but I could certainly manage to pick up a cake, dammit.

Mentally mapping out every moment of my thirty-nine minutes, I whipped into Frank’s office to find a checkbook. For such an organized mind, one that I knew was stuffed with facts and esoterica catalogued by year, subject, and location, Frank’s desk was a mess. 

I sifted through loose papers, pens, and notepads on top of and inside of his desk, looking for his checkbook.  The drawers on the right were stuffed with photographs of our small family, thumbtacks, rubber bands, scraps of paper with numbers and words with question marks on them.

( _1755? Grave marker? S. Carolina marker-BER, b. ??? d. 183(9?)_ ).  

I hardly took note of the papers.  Frank’s singular obsession with the Highlands, the Jacobites, and his own ancestry had raised my hackles when I had first returned through the stones.  Swollen with Jamie’s baby and aching acutely with the loss of him, I had actively hated Frank’s devotion.  Of all of the countries in the world, of all of the centuries, of all of the big personalities, his interests were nonetheless precise.  The Highland Clearances. The Bonnie Fucking Prince. But I had come to terms with the obsession slowly, trying not to take it personally. 

Scotland is what Frank knew and whispers of his interest permeated our life together in unexpected ways. I was used to finding scraps of paper with years and names in his unlaundered pants and the breast pockets of his shirts when I did the laundry.  I was used to listening to him chat with colleagues over dinner, detailing his latest research or theory.  I was used to writing checks for absurdly expensive phone bills detailing long distance calls to Edinburgh and Inverness and Glasgow and Greenock and Perth.  

In the second drawer from the top on the left-hand side I found the checkbook (MR. AND MRS. FRANK RANDALL, 182 COVE STREET, BOSTON, MA 02102).  I seized it, feeling victorious, and stopped cold seeing at what was sitting under it. 

The front page was curling, its edges clearly worried by the author’s hand.  Written in even script across the front page: “ _JAMMF, b. 1 May 1722 (’21?), d. 180- (?)-Virginia, m. CBRF, b. ???, d. _____.”

An arrow down the side of the page to: “ _Culloden_ _…8-12 men? Others executed; JAMMF survived? Wounded. Came to colonies?”_

The paper tucked into the notebook behind the curling front page was large.  I realized it was a tracing before I had it unfolded.  The delicate paper was as thin as tissue. The graphite was smeared but I could make out the words and identify the tracing’s source plain as day. 

_A gravemarker_. 

Here be Buried the remains of

JAMES ALEXANDER MALCOLM MACKENZIE FRASER

BORN May 1, 1721

DIED Dec’r 26, 1806

Aged 85 years

In life united in affection with his wife

CLAIRE ELIZABETH FRASER

DIED 1746, resting place known only to the Lord

Their Daughter

FAITH FRASER

DIED1744, her remains moved to this Place 1765

All United in affection for eternity

In a banner at the bottom:  _Je suis prest._

I looked over it repeatedly, attempting to understand the words that were so plain and simple, but so contrary to the foundation of everything I had built for myself.  

My eyes fixed on fourth line. 1806.  

My eyes then fixed on the fifth line.  Eighty-five years at death.  My hand came to my mouth to clamp the sound that rose in my throat.


	2. Sensation

**Chapter Two**

**_Sensation_ **

**_22-23 November 1951_ **

**_Boston_ **

When Frank and I first moved to Boston I complained ( _a lot_ ) about the lack of green space.  We had stretched our budget within dollars of destitution and the home we had was lovely. But, after the open spaces I had grown to love the last few years, the leafless brown claustrophobia of the city was suffocating.

In response, Frank transformed the narrow sliver of land behind our row house into as lush a landscape as he could manage.  He dug holes and planted hedges, a rose bush, lilacs, trees, and rows of perennials that bloomed bright shades of yellow, orange, pink, and purple throughout the spring and summer. He built a raised plot and planted vegetables and herbs in careful rows. He even planted a small terracotta pot of marigolds, using it as the centerpiece for the picnic table constructed with his own hands.  

Frank did it all while I was pregnant, horribly distant, and downright horrible.  He never even asked for a “thank you.” It was simply a place for me. Made by him.  “It isn’t much…” he had started.  I had shaken my head and wrapped my arms around his neck.  

I had been telling the truth when I replied, trying, with: “It is perfect.”

At the kitchen table I dressed blisters from the manual labor he was not accustomed to.  He trained his eyes on me and did not look down at my handiwork.  He hissed curses ( _fuck, Claire!_ ) when I cleaned the sores from previous weekends of work ripped open by his new labor.  My face had been burning as I thought of the intimacy of our closeness.  

When I was finished Frank rested a bandaged palm over the crest of my belly.  He was testing the waters, to see if I would flinch or draw away, as I always did when he attempted to touch growing evidence of the life inside of me.

 “You’re so lovely pregnant, Claire,” he had whispered, lips against my forehead.  I had placed a hand over his and brushed the slightest kiss on his forehead.

That moment, for the first time since returning through the stones I found myself tentatively entertaining the thought of loving him again.  

Now that moment, and a million others, took on a new significance.  

_How long had he fucking known?_

Had the delicate paper evidence of Jamie’s spared life been in his desk when he touched me like that? When he had pressed his lips to my forehead, had he already written the historian’s conclusion, clinical and in shorthand, that Jamie had survived the Battle of Culloden?  

Had the tracing confirming Jamie’s full 85 years of life been in Frank’s desk when he held Brianna for the first time? 

Had Frank known intimately the contents of Jamie’s letters to Lallybroch ( _Home_ ) when screaming, drunk on scotch and wagging his finger, that I needed to quit loving a ghost?  Had the tracing been in his desk when he first took me to bed after Brianna was born? Had he thought of the contents of his desk when he promised to love Bree as his own? Had he even thought to tell me?

I suddenly hated that garden for planting a seed that allowed me to feel _something_ for Frank.

“Just you, then? And… the little one?”  The hotel clerk looked me up and down and let his eyes stray to Brianna, who was clinging like a barnacle to my leg.  She stared blankly up at the clerk with a thumb in her mouth.

 “Just me and the little one,” I confirmed, signing a check with a flourish.  I could not be bothered to offer an explanation, not that one could satisfy his curiosity.

Bree and I settled into the hotel room and ate greasy hamburgers off of a paper napkin tablecloth I spread out on the bed. Brianna sang along to the radio while eating her deconstructed hamburger in tiny bites.  I had no clue how she knew most of the words to _Come On-a My House_.  

After only a few bites my stomach rejected fundamentally the idea of food, so I contented myself to watch Bree.  I wondered if she was out-of-tune because she was three years old or if she was really that much her tone-deaf father’s daughter. Listening to her earnestly hammer through the chorus, dropping vowels and adding syllables, was a welcome respite from the past few hours.

It had taken over an hour for me to draw myself up from Frank’s desk, legs shaking. I had carefully folded the tracing of Jamie’s grave marker into a small square and cleared the desktop with a broad stroke of my forearm. A framed picture of us standing outside of his parents’ house after the war, clinging to one another, clattered to the floor. The glass somehow survived the fall.  

The sound of tumbling books, photographs, and files had roused Bree, and she had started to babble sleepily from the next room.

 _Dah-dee, dah-dee, dah-dee, mama, mama, mama_.

She sounded content to chatter to herself, so I continued my search, emptying the first drawer, the second, the third. I easily discarded irrelevant pieces of scholarship and stationery to the floor.

In the end, I was left with a small cache of information: a bound stack of letters, a copy of the deed transferring Lallybroch (my own tear-splotched 203-year-old signature plain at the bottom - _Claire Fraser_ ), the gravestone tracing, two notebooks with scribbled notes of varying levels of decipherability, a pamphlet authored by “A. Malcolm,” and some invoices for a print shop.  

I deposited all of the materials into a folder, save a single letter that I folded and deposited in my pants pocket.  The slim folder was everything I had, but it was infuriatingly little to hold in light of my knew knowledge.  

Heart hammering and mind reeling, I placed both hands flat on the desk, leaning my weight into it, and sighed.   I looked from one hand to the other. I removed the gold band from my left ring finger without a moment’s hesitation.  I massaged the twin ridges where the band had rested since Frank slipped it onto my finger the first time.  I placed the ring dead center on the leather blotter. 

I had no intention of being in the house when Frank returned, though part of me was angry enough that I wanted to be there just to scream and dig my fingernails into his throat. But at the sound of Bree cooing “ _dah-dee mama”_ like a mantra, the revenge fantasy playing in the cinema of my mind ended. I could not seriously entertain the notion of attacking the only father she had known while she stood stomping her small feet in her crib.  

I wiped tears from my face and I entered Bree’s room with a faux enthusiasm.  “We are going on an adventure, Bree-Bee!”

 “Whassat?” she asked, her small feet dancing over the mattress. She gripped the edge of her crib and crouched, looking at me through the rails.  

“We are going to a _hotel_!” I announced over my shoulder, gathering a change of clothes from her dresser.

“HO-TELL!” she squealed, giggling.  “Simming!” 

We had stayed in precisely one hotel with her.  Frank had attended a conference in New Orleans earlier in the year to speak on the exile of Charles Edward Stuart. The three of us had flown down together and stayed in a hotel with an outdoor pool.  Ever since, Bree had been unable to quit squeaking about the _ho-tell_ and _simmin’_ and _aero-plane_ to anyone who would listen.  We had spent the better part of the day in the pool, passing Bree back and forth, lifting her, and splashing each other.  We left only when my nose was beet red and the skin on Frank’s shoulders was a deep, freckled bronze.  

That night we had eaten crawfish, Brianna screaming in delight as Frank ripped heads clean from the crustaceans’ bodies while the arch of my bare foot traveled the back of his calf under the table.  

When Brianna had fallen asleep back at the hotel, Frank and I had retired to the balcony.  We had gotten drunk on American beer and laughed about Brianna: her love for the pool and hatred of baths, her almost insane shriek of delight at Frank’s dismemberment of the crawfish, her 200-or-so-word vocabulary that adopted whatever accents were nearest.  

That day, the accent was a confused amalgamation of London, Boston, and New Orleans.

Laughing, I had allowed Frank to straddle me on the lounge chair and slip his hand under my skirt.  When his fingers found what they were searching for, I had arched against him and groaned into his sunburnt chest.  We touched each other like virgins, giggling and exploring.  When he rose to use the washroom, promising a surprise on his return, I had bit down on my finger to keep from laughing at the tent of his erection straining at his zipper. 

I found myself giddy.   _Maybe_  a little swoony.

And then I stopped laughing, the smile fading from my face as quickly as it had appeared.

London.  Boston. New Orleans. There was one notable accent missing from the lilt to Bree’s words.  And recognizing its absence was like a dagger of ice through my heart.  With Frank in the room, I indulged in the fantasy of what Bree would sound like with Jamie’s influence on her speech and vocabulary – “u”s becoming “oo”s and his “o”s becoming “ae”s.  I wondered if Bree would adopt a toddler’s version of Jamie’s turns of phrase, his lapses into Gaelic. I straightened my skirt and crossed my legs, ignoring the dying pulse at the apex of my thighs.

When Frank came back to the deck with a glass of melting ice cubes, my far off stare and adjustments apparently stopped him cold.  He set a glass of ice cubes down next to me, not looking at me.  Then he walked to the wrought iron railing, laid both hands out at the full expanse of his arms, and bowed his head.  “I thought we could make love,” he had muttered ruefully, gnawing his cheek.

“I thought so, too.” I paused.  I added, “I’m sorry.”  Because it _was_ true.  None of this was fair to him, living with the ghost of my centuries-old husband in every moment.   _Had he known that Jamie had lived then?_

Brianna broke me out of the cage of my own memories, this time with more gusto.  “ _SIMMING!_ ”

“Yes, I suppose,” I conceded, wondering where we would need to go to find a hotel with indoor swimming pool and a vacancy two days before Thanksgiving.  I dropped Bree’s swimsuit in the bag balanced on my hip and lifted her from the crib.

“ADVENTURE!” she declared, poking an index finger into my cheek and grinning.  

A forty-five-minute drive later, the stars aligned and I found a Holiday Inn with a flickering neon “VACANCY” sign and the promise of an indoor pool.  Now here we were in a shockingly expensive hotel room. Just the two of us, as the clerk remarked.  The room smelled like our burgers and fries, the stale musk of past patrons’ cigarettes, and the sour bite of chlorinated water.  

When I pulled our swimming suits from the bag, Brianna clapped, and announced we were “simmin’ on Bree-Bee birf-day!” My heart soared, watching her throw her arms into the air with such an innocent and overwhelming joy, her face almost splitting in a smile.  For a moment she looked like Jamie.

“You know it’s your birthday _tomorrow_ , Bree-Bee.”  She ignored me, instead babbling about the fish she expected lived in the swimming pool. The swimsuit barely fit, I had to jiggle it up over her small belly while she squirmed.  My baby was becoming a _child_ and would not be my baby much longer.

Surprisingly, swimming was not an all-night affair.  After half an hour of Bree kicking her feet while we sat next to each other on the pool’s edge, slapping her arms against the water viciously as I walked around the shallow end with a protective grip around her waist, and cooing “c’mon fishy fishy” at her reflection, she was done.  It all came to an abrupt end when some boys belly flopped into the deep end.  Bree turned in my arms, letting out an eardrum-cracking scream of vowels and clung to my neck we rocked back and forth on the waves reverberating through the pool.  

Smoothing down her hair and kissing her cheek, I noticed the slight green cast to her skin.  I added sea sickness to the mental catalogue of Jamie Fraser qualities I had been able to identify in her three short years. Once in the room Bree was unconscious face down on the bed within minutes. 

After retrieving the folded letter from my pants pocket, I climbed into bed as gently as possible as not to wake her.  Sitting with my legs crossed in front of me and leaning against the headboard, I stared at Jamie’s letter. The letter’s author, its recipients, its carrier were all dead along with all of those who they knew.  Reading it felt like a ghoulish exercise, but I already had at least half a dozen times. But I opened it again like it was new to me, my heart hammering and blood rushing to my face. 

Upon first finding the bound stack of letters, I had sat in silence just resting my fingers on the paper Jamie had touched.  On this reading I wept silently and drew my knees to my chest.  With the knowledge of Jamie’s life, spanning decades without me, I felt alone, even with our beautiful daughter slumbering next to me.

I don’t think Jamie could have written a letter long enough to sate my need to hang on his every thought, but it said enough for me to cling to.

_Dearest Sister & Brother:_

_I have but one moment this morning to write. By now you have doubtless heard that I live.  I live in the sense that my body has a physiological imperative over the devastation wrought by my mind.  My Beloved Claire is gone. Such an unfathomable emptiness resides in me that I fear I will never recover from it. I thought she would always be mine.  She no longer is.  I cannot write more because the nearness of her departure remains raw. You will have questions: how, where, when, & et cetera. Someday I perhaps shall have occasion to tell you of the loss of my Beloved Claire._

_For now, I am in mourning, and shall not speak of such things except to the Lord._

_For now, you must remain in the dark as to my whereabouts. I am alive, I am safe, & I must be away. Do not look for me; I am hunted well enough & cannot bear the worry of your involvement in this life I now must bear.  I cannot tell when I will return, but I pray it will be some day to lay eyes on Lallybroch & you._

_For now, I heal from this bloody war, I continue to try to find an existence without Claire. Do not worry after me_ _– I have ever been well. Tell strong young Jamie and beautiful wee Maggie that in due time their Uncle shall again see them, and that they must learn their lessons and mind their parents. I pray for you all that you find peace now that Scotland is no longer torn apart by bloodshed._

_Your loving Brother, always,_

_J._

_30 May 1746_.

I felt dually betrayed. I wanted to scream in rage for Jamie’s failure to keep his word to die on that fucking moor. At the same time, I wanted to sink to my knees in prayer and thank God for Jamie’s failure to keep his word to die on that fucking moor. It was a wholly irrational bitterness being mad at him for _living_. 

I glanced down.  Bree was sleeping hard.  Her flushed cheek was pressed to the sheet.  Her mouth was open and she had dribbled a perfect half-moon of drool.  I laid a hand on her warm back.  “Sweet girl,” I whispered, tears still streaking down my face and taking only a small measure of comfort in the rise and fall of her back.

And then, just like that, my chest was collapsing. I did not realize that I was sobbing until I started to hiccup.  Bree stirred under my hand, not waking, only readjusting. I held my hand steady as she rolled onto her back. Her right leg came up until she rested the flat of her foot against her knee.  She sighed, smiling and raising her tiny fists to rest above her head.   _Jamie_.

The physics of my travel through time had always confused me.  What was inevitable… destiny? What was malleable through choice and agency? Jamie had survived Culloden. Had that survival been written indelibly in history long before I parted from him? Was Jamie alive in the parallel sense of a life 200 years in the past? Was he dead, having been rotting for some number years? Was he as real now, warm-flesh and air in his lungs, as he was when we had laid together?

I had always liked to think of Jamie as running a parallel life as me, like someone in another time zone or zip code.  Thinking him dead had never stopped me from talking to him in quiet moments.

At Bree’s first birthday party, I sat in the bathroom sipping a hard liquor-spiked punch and eating cake.  I whispered to Jamie about Bree over the hum of the exhaust fan.  I pretended in that moment, and in a thousand others, that my words would be inside Jamie, imprinted in the very marrow of his bones. Jamie’s knowledge of Bree would become fact from my words, spoken into white noise 200 years gone.   

Jamie would _just know_ that he had a red-haired daughter who was sturdy and generous, a good sleeper, always sunny and joyful. Jamie would know that she was stubborn and smart, and that her laugh had a hundred iterations, different depending on what elicited it.  Jamie _just knew_ that she was ticklish and had the precise, even fringes of red-blonde eyelashes on each eyelid.  When he closed his eyes, he could picture the eyelashes resting on her cheeks when she slept.  Because he was the same way, he knew without me saying that Bree always whimpered before she woke, stretching her legs downward as if searching for solid ground with her feet.

As if he had been there, he knew the funny stories that were, by now, family lore ( _our family’s lore_ ).  The types of stories always told with “remember that time when Bree…” as the opening line.  Like the time when Bree just said “no more ba,” pushing Frank’s hand away insistently. She never drank from a bottle again.  

Jamie knew that she loved puppies, that “puppies” was her term for dogs any size or age, and that she could eat strawberries until she became sick. 

But there were things that I never told Jamie and he would never know.  Like when Bree pushed away the bottle, Frank and I had erupted in laughter.  Like how the moment seemed more poignant when Frank told her she was such a clever and planted his lips to my temple in a dry kiss.  

I never spoke aloud of the times that, inspired by Frank’s way with her, I allowed him to take me to our bed and use my body.  I never spoke aloud of the things I whispered to Frank that seemed like they _should be_ _right_ , but were never true. ( _I love you_.)  I never spoke to either Frank _or_ Jamie about the gurgling ache of shame that came from inside me every time Frank and I fulfilled a physical need in the other.  I never spoke to either of the festering ache that I felt for betraying Jamie, spreading inside of me for days after the fact.  

Now, knowing Jamie had lived, all of those moments talking to his ghost seemed silly in a way they hadn’t at the time.  The realization that I had not been speaking to a dead man, an apparition I somehow believed could hear me from heaven (or wherever), shook me.  

No, I had just been talking to someone who _was just not there_.

In this parallel existence, was Jamie thinking of us… of Bree and of me? Was he wondering about where we lived, the color of her eyes and hair, her first words? Did he entertain the notion that he had a _daughter_ not a son? Did he have a daughter’s name that he loved that I just did not know? Did he think that I had forgotten him, giving myself over to Frank completely?

Did he think of me, remembering the shape of my body or the way we fit together when it was cold? Did he have an image of me in his head, pregnant with our baby? Was the image realistic: sweaty and swollen in the heat of the late summer months, breasts full and aching? He certainly could not conjure the most common image: my body folded over the **_toilet_** vomiting both from morning sickness and missing him.

I ached knowing that Bree was extraordinary – an impossible creature of contradictions and sweetness and beauty and stubbornness that was so uniquely ours. Jamie would have to know her to really be able to picture her.

I could feel a sob bubbling in my throat, threatening to come out.  As gently as I could, I rose from the bed and slipped into the narrow, tiled bathroom. I emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet.  

“Jamie is alive,” I said aloud to the mirror, testing the words.  And as simple as it was to say, as good as it felt to say out loud, I realized that the _truth_ of the statement meant something far more complicated.  I had been sure of only one thing about my return through the rocks: Jamie Fraser was going to die in the Battle of Culloden. I had kept my end of the bargain by returning to the twentieth century, to Frank, to attempt to live a life. The foundation of that life was gone. It was replaced by something so bittersweet I could not reduce the feeling to words. 

Now I was unsure of absolutely _everything_ , save the red-haired baby slumbering in the next room.

That was enough to make me go thoroughly to pieces on the bathroom floor.

The next morning, I woke on the bed to Bree’s insistent hand on my shoulder, shaking me as violently as a three-year-old could.  “Mama’s ‘kay?”

I blinked a few times, swallowing and attempting to wet my lips with a dry tongue.  I nodded, giving her the slightest smile.  Her face was creased from the sheets, still rosy from sleep.

“Bree-Bee birfday!” she declared, grinning, putting a hand on either side of my face and squeezing until my lips puckered.  “Dah-dee, Mama, birfday!”

“Yes, yes,” I confirmed, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her to my chest.  “Daddy, Mama. Bree-Bee birfday.”


	3. Reckoning

**Chapter Three**

**_Reckoning_ **

**_23 November 1951_ **

**_Boston_ **

Frank was sitting in kitchen when we returned home.  He looked like he had been waiting up all night. Bree launched herself at him, grinning. “Happy birthday, baby,” Frank breathed into her hair and pulled her to his chest.  Based on the half-empty bottle of bourbon on the table next to him I assumed his breathy tone was the result of a slight intoxication.  He kissed Bree three times on the forehead, three times on each cheek, and three times on the nose.  “There, one for each year.”

Bree giggled, struggling against him when he started to tickle her.  He let her slip free when her elbow made sharp contact with the bridge of his nose. “Birfday! Mama simmin’ inna HO-TELL!” she announced, putting small fists on her hips. 

Frank flicked a glance up to me.  “So that’s where you’ve been?”  

I did not respond, unwilling to get into this with Bree literally between us.  

Frank shrugged, returning his attention to Bree, who launched into an animated explanation of the _ho-tell_ , _simmin_ _’_ , _hammer-burgers_ , and _sad Mama_. 

After a few minutes, Frank whispered, “You should go see what Daddy put together in your room.  It’s a surprise.” 

“Supp-prize?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Yes, a surprise… a present.”

Bree charged out of the kitchen and down the hall to her bedroom.  Without prompting, I took a chair across from him.

“I bought a cake for the party. I brought it home last night.” He gestured to the pink box on the kitchen counter. He used the same voice to talk to me that he was using to wish Bree a happy birthday.  “I knew you would never get something baked.” 

“Of course you did.” The permanent professorial furrow between his eyebrows deepened.  “Have you been drinking all night?”  

Frank smirked, picking up the bottle and refilling his glass.  He gave me a two-fingered salute before drinking deeply.  “I suppose you think you’re going to… what, Claire? Take our daughter through those bloody stones?”

So there would be no pretense to our conversation.  He did not have to ask me what I had found because he knew. 

 _Good_. 

Clearly realizing he would not receive an answer, he continued.  “Are you going to _abandon_ her here and go alone? You want to have yourself a fuckfest with your other man… your fucking ghost, yeah? The real question: who comes along with you in time and do you go forever, then?”  He laughed humorlessly and slid the glass across the table to me.  I did not touch it. Instead, I crossed my legs and arms and leaned back to study him.  

I was not going to be baited by his profane characterization of my life with Jamie.  I did not have to explain _anything_ to him.

“I suppose our life together means nothing if you can be with that ghoul whose name you whimper when you’re touching yourself, huh?”  He drained the glass. His lips twisted into a sneer. “You could use a good deep dicking, Claire. God knows you aren’t getting it from me.” 

I had only seen this side of him a few times – mostly in the darkest days when we reunited after the war when we were both profoundly damaged and after I returned through the stones, profoundly damaged yet again, and missing Jamie like a piece of my body had been taken from me. “Is this supposed to inspire me to stay?” I asked coolly, tilting my head to the side.  

“Stay?” he snorted.  “Jesus Christ, Claire… how can I beg you to stay when you’ve never even really _been_ here.” 

I was struck by how much like Black Jack Randall Frank was in the moment.  My mind flashed back to a conversation I had with Jack Randall shortly before I came back through the stones – pleading with a monster in human clothing to show some humanity for Mary Hawkins, to fulfill his brother’s dying wish. At our kitchen table I felt like I was like sitting across from Jack Randall’s twin: the shape of his hands, the upturned corner of his lip, the wrinkle at the corner of his eyes, the booze-addled slur of his words.  

 _This was the man I tried so hard to save?_ No, he was not even close.  This not the Frank who hugged me near suffocation when we reunited post-war, who married me so we could meet his parents for tea and they would _have_ _to_ love me, who I eagerly allowed to use my body for indecent things in semi-public places.   _This_ was not even a man. This was the callus that formed around a man destroyed years and years earlier.

“How long have you known?”

Frank shrugged, running a finger around and around the lip of his empty glass.  “Eighteen months… give or take. I’ve suspected for far longer than that.”

I exhaled through my nose, unfolding my arms and resting my elbows on the table. I put my head in my hands, unable to look at him.  We had shared thousands of moments in the last eighteen months.

“So are you just going to do it and hope you live through it… hope that Bree lives through it? Maybe she will make it through and you won’t. She is a _very_ brave, _very_ curious little girl, so maybe that’ll all work itself out.”  He was not saying anything that I hadn’t considered a hundred times. But then he took a turn, somehow becoming even uglier.  “Maybe you’re just planning a little holiday to get filled up and come back for the toilets and running water? I’m not clear on what you mean when you promise someone to be with them ‘ _forever_ ,’ so…”

“Fuck you,” I muttered, not offended so much as frustrated that I had no clue what I was going to do. None of my choices were even close to what I would consider “good.”

First, I could go to the stones with Bree. The second trip had been immeasurably worse than the first.  Darkness, white-hot pain, a screaming buzz that stayed with me for months, terror and knocking about weightless, voiceless, in a void.  I would do it again and again and again if it meant being with Jamie again. _But_ I could not chance any of it being inflicted on Bree. What if one of us did not make it? What if Bree was like Jamie, deaf to the buzzing and possessing a touch immune to the stones’ power?  She was three.  I may not know until she reached out to touch the stones and either fell backwards in time or didn’t, left behind.   

Second, I could go to the stones without Bree. I would never leave her without the promise that I could return to her.  I needed her like I needed air. Now that I knew Jamie was alive I felt like I needed him more than the heart hammering in my chest. To keep breathing I needed to touch him, make love to him, say all the things that Culloden stole from us, and have a proper parting (whatever that meant).  But unable to assure myself of an ability to return to Bree, I could not flit across time to see Jamie and return to 1951.  My need for our daughter was savage and I had _promised_ him.

Third, I could wait for some unidentifiable period and go to the stones. This was the only option that made sense.  The question then became _when_.  Certainly when Bree was older and I could somehow explain all of this to her.

Fourth, I could do nothing. I could feel something inside of me die off at the thought.

I was stuck, frustrated and pulsating with an anger that reached my bones.  Frank rubbed the back of his neck and narrowed his eyes at me.

“What was I to do, Claire? Tell you so I could watch you slip further away from me? Tell you so I could pick up the pieces when you abandoned us or you took our daughter from me?”

“I would never abandon her,” I snapped, offended at the fact he had even entertained the notion.  “And I don’t _think_ I would take her.”

Frank clicked his tongue and smirked.  “So you’ve considered it.  You owe me – tell me what you’re going to do.”

“You don’t get to make your betrayal about me, Frank,” I snapped.  

“ _My_ betrayal?” he snapped back in kind, his voice rising.  Frank made a fist, releasing it over and over again in an attempt to cool off a little.  He pointed at me, his hand shaking.  “ _You_ are the one who stepped out on this marriage, Claire.   _You_. For _years_. Any fault you can find in whatever remedial steps I took to assure our future with our daughter comes back to that. You set this all into motion. Never forget it.”

Sighing, I shook my head and rubbed at my temple.  

“You don’t love me.” There was no emotion to the statement either – no hurt, no embarrassment, no longing, no nostalgia.  Just four words strung together.

“It’s more complicated than that, Frank.”

He pursed his lips and flared his nostrils, nodding.  I could tell it was not an unexpected answer.  “Then what the fuck are we doing?”

“I don’t know,” I answered plainly, rising and turning away from him.  “We are not doing _this_ anymore, though.”

Later, we celebrated Bree’s birthday surrounded by friends from the neighborhood and a few of Frank’s colleagues.  The party was lovely and I managed to dodge all but one photograph of the three of us. “ _C’mon, be a good sport_ ,” Frank had muttered, grabbing me by the elbow and pulling me into the shot, holding Bree with one arm and wrapping another around my waist, his hand on my hip.  “You’ll want to remember this day.”

Frank’s spectacular parting gift, given to Bree with a sideways glance to me, was in a wiggling pink box with a yellow bow. When I shot him a questioning look, Frank’s only response before walking away was: “Every child of divorce should have a dog.”

After the partygoers left and the birthday girl was snuggled in bed, Frank retreated from the kitchen and made a show of removing luggage from the hall closet.  Instead of giving him the fight he apparently itched for, I shut myself into the washroom and ran a bath.  I let the water run until it threatened a Biblical flooding of the bathroom. I relished the warm relief of conscious thought turning into a dull emptiness and finally a complete, weightless silence. Sleep took me under gently.

In my dream Jamie was teasing me with his mouth, one hand easily lifting my bottom to improve the angle of his tongue’s attentions. His other snaked over my belly with feather-light touches to knead my right breast lazily.  Sunlight filtered through curtains and caught his hair. He was _beautiful_. My own hands were occupied – one on my left breast and the other in that glorious mess of hair.  His hair was damp from _something_ … maybe rain, maybe a shower, and his shoulder was slicked with sweat. I arched against his mouth, needing a release. My lips released the first syllable of his name – a breathy _Jay_. I panted, my right hand slipping from his hair to the hard line of muscle along his shoulders. I sighed the second syllable – a quiet _Me_.

Instead of accepting the encouragement, Jamie suddenly stopped – the loss of his mouth leaving a phantom pain between my legs, like I’d lost an appendage. _“_ Ye needta find me, Claire. Come to me, Claire _.”_

“What?” In the dream I sat up, fingers still in his hair and at his shoulder. He wasn’t giving me a directive to finish; he had never told me to come.  I wasn’t even sure he knew the turn of phrase.  Jamie slid up my body, erection pressing into my belly as he rested the length of his body along my own.

“I said ye needta find me, Claire.”  I could feel my face screwed up in concentration. Jamie slipped a hand between my legs and began to nibble my neck skillfully just below my hairline.

“Jamie, I don’t understand,” I mumbled. I felt exhausted, fighting the twin urges of  _just giving in_ to the pleasure and fighting to understand what he was saying. With his free hand Jamie repositioned my hips and slipped into me with a lazy familiarity. “Jamie, please… tell me what you mean.”

His lips found my jaw and whispered, his breath warm on the shell of my ear.  “It’s right there in front of ye.”  His teeth caught my earlobe and he chuckled.  “Dinnae be frightened, Claire.”

When I woke, my hand was under water between my legs.  I sighed slightly. The moment was gone. I gave myself enough time for my heart to stop pounding and the frustration of unfulfilled arousal to dissipate before getting out of the bathtub.  After drying I checked on Bree.  She was nestled face-down on her new big girl bed, bum in the air. I leaned over the waist-high safety railing and pressed a kiss onto her sleeping cheek.  I was not sure if Frank was asleep or not, but he was in our bed, pajama clad and blankets up over his shoulders, facing away from the door.  All five pieces of our luggage set were lined against the wall.  

Without pausing to see if he was asleep, I took a pillow from my side of the bed and retreated to the living room.  I plucked the whimpering Divorce Puppy (named Sprinkles by Bree) from the small hexagonal pen where she had been left for the night.  I shushed her when she started to whine, and situated myself on the couch, my face in her warm, spongy, black fur.  My pillow smelled of my perfume and Frank’s aftershave.  I made a mental note to scrub Frank’s scent from the bedding as soon as he was on his way.   

I didn’t sleep, instead thinking for hours of how I would get to Jamie.  Nothing came to me.

I woke the next morning to a whip of cold air from the open front door.  Frank was standing on the front stoop with Sprinkles on the end of a leash.  He was smoking a cigarette and dressed for the day.  I rubbed sleep from my eyes and winced as I sat up, my body protesting the sudden movement after a night of tossing and turning on the narrow couch.

“Can you shut the door or stub that out?” I grumbled sleepily, rubbing my eyes.

Frank turned to look at me over his shoulder, the malice from the night before gone.  Without protest, he flicked the cigarette into the bushes and clicked his tongue until the puppy came bounding into the house.  “I’m going to go, but I need to talk to you before I do.” 

The last thing I wanted to do was to talk to him, but I was not sure he was going to give me much of a choice. Frank bent down and from his open briefcase took out a large envelope.

“You didn’t find everything I have about… _that man_. I kept this in my office at the university,” he admitted, looking a little abashed.  He set the envelope on the coffee table and sat down next to me.  He laid his hand to rest on top of it as if he were swearing on a bible.  “I know that this all has hurt you. It is no excuse, but you’ve hurt me, too. I did what I thought would let me love you and love our daughter.”

I could hear my heart beating in my ears.

“Please don’t open it until I’m gone. And please don’t take our daughter anywhere without talking to me.”

I felt tears burning along my lower lash line.

“This is still too raw for me to wish you good luck, but I hope you recognize what it takes for me to not just drop this into the fireplace, Claire.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead, inhaling deeply. “Goodbye. For now.”

I watched him lift the suitcases and walk out of the front door. “Bye,” I whispered after he closed the front door.

I stared at the envelope, arms crossed over my chest. The tears along my lash line started to fall.  I reached for the envelope only after I heard his car pull away from the curb.  My senses were dulled by the competing need to have some hope last and the animal lust to know what was inside.

My throat and mouth and lips were dry.  I could not swallow.  

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Randall, get it together,” I muttered, undoing the red tie around the closure of the envelope and slipping my hand inside.  I pulled out a single piece of paper, a grainy photocopy.

It was a publication of some sort printed by A. Malcolm & Associate Printers. It was dated December 1751.  I read the article on the page, not sure why Frank kept this particular printing. But then my eyes were drawn to a small inscription along the pamphlet’s seam.  Just below the filigree of thistles and swirls was: _C., my Sassenach_ _—Brittany, Fr., 1 Feb._ _‘52. I pray that you will meet me at those Stones._


	4. Grassfire

**Chapter Four**

**_Grassfire_ **

**_12 January 1952_ **

**_Virginia_ **

When I was six years old I was in the world with Uncle Lamb.  I took lessons taught by a PhD student in a tent with the children of professors in the middle of the Sahara Desert for a few hours four days a week. During one lesson, our instructor’s voice flat and bored, we learned about human interactions with ecosystems. Shaking, I read ahead and learned about controlled burns – humans setting fire to forest or grassland – as a method to control vegetation, improve accessibility, and control disease. At the end of my reading, having committed the pictures of grass and trees engulfed in flames to memory, I had been nearly inconsolable. 

I can still remember the feeling from that night – crying wordlessly as I pushed fish and rice around on my plate. Uncle Lamb just watched me scrape scales off of the fish, dumbfounded I am sure. At the time he was still frequently saying things like “ _this is Claire, my deceased brother Henry’s_ _girl”_ to people he had known for years _._ He was still only accustomed to being _Uncle Lamb_ _with the fantastic stories about wind-spun sand and the desert and Egypt_.

He wasn’t a parent, but I knew at the time that he would laid his life down for me without a second thought. Just as I was certain I would do the same for Brianna now.  But he had not quite yet become the next best thing to a parent.  He had eventually become the man who would buy my first sanitary napkins (having no shame purchasing the box of Junior Kotex in the green box), offer to beat the first boy who broke my heart senseless, or give me an awkward and faltering sex talk when he saw me start to pay attention to boys (blessedly stopping when I sputtered, beet red, “ _I know all of this okay?!_ ”and simply saying _“I know all too well that boys can hurt you, so be careful with who you let have your heart”_ ).  

At six, the memory of my parents’ death was still a painful, gaping wound.  Despite the acute pain, my memories of them ( _voices_ , _hands_ , _smile lines_ , _accents, smells_ ) were the hardening silver line of a scar on a part of my body that I rarely noticed but knew I had. Eventually I would come to forget almost all of the traits that made them. But that night the baseline of my grief over their loss, augmented by what I had read for school, had been too much for me to bear.

“Claire, love, whatever is the matter now?” Uncle Lamb had finally asked, his voice low and soft, careful. He had wholeheartedly taken me into his traveling band of archaeologists and postgraduate students.  Despite this, and the fact that _really tried_ , he never quite mastered the patience of someone who had _yearned_ to be a parent, choosing to be a parent and intentionally creating a reality around that choice.

I had told him the whole thing, sobbing about the destruction of forests and grasslands, the way that families of animals were separated.  

He had taken my hand and kissed the back of it.

“Love, from those burns comes _new_ life.”  He explained biodiversity and soil and how _fire_ cleared the way for new life to take hold, roots deep, green bits reaching for the sun until they exploded into trees and grass and _life_.

That conversation stuck with me through every difficult moment in my life. Every time I felt like the world was closing its fingers around my throat and squeezing and squeezing, white hot stars bursting behind closed eyelids, I would think of the burn as a palate cleanser for something better to come. But at this point I felt like my life had burned down repeatedly and I was sick of rebuilding, the taste of char ever-present on my lips.

When I was five an anonymous policeman told me that my parents were dead and that my Uncle would be coming from “ _some oil country_ ” to come get me. I had been too confused to cry and too young to understand the profundity of the loss.  

When war broke out across Europe for the second time in my life, murderous and unrelenting, I had been cleaved almost violently from Frank.  Our life as newlyweds had gone up in flames. We were young, newly married, in love, and obsessed with the other.  After the war, the bodies of the dead not yet cool in the ground, we reunited. There was sex, but the magnetic pull to consume one another and know everything about the other from before the war was gone. In Scotland we started to find each other again, to put down roots in one another.  We were taking the ever-so-tentative steps of coming back to each other.

When I traveled through the stones the first time my second chance at a life with Frank had gone up in flames. _Jamie_. I did not expect to fall in love with him or to need him in all ways. I actively fought falling in love with Jamie. I made love to Jamie, I desired him, and I cried in many quiet, unseen moments over the loss of Frank. I took the forceful crack of his hand and belt after trying to get back to Frank. It was a memory that still shook me to my core. I forgave him, I let him make it up to me.  In the hierarchy of needs – _physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, self-actualization_ – we were complete.  When given the choice, _his_ real and selfless choice, I chose _Jamie_. And I chose _right_.

 When Jamie and I left for France, my body was a cocoon for our baby ( _Faith_ ).  Jack Randall had set fire to our life – torturing the very soul of the man I loved until it was charred, brittle, broken, and sterile. We somehow survived and were prepared to fight to come back to one another.  The fight was brutal – our knuckles bled, our knees were skinned from the battle, our voices raw – but we paid the ransom on Jamie’s soul. We lifted the weight from _my_ soul with the promise of the new life growing inside of me.  Jamie had pressed his hand over my swollen belly, whispering in Gaelic.  He found his new purpose growing inside of me.

 When we lost Faith it felt like a nuclear bomb had detonated inside of me.  It shredded each nerve ending, searing them closed until I was convinced I would never feel anything _but_ the pain of her loss again.  It scorched the earth for as far as the eye could see. I touched Faith’s skin, almost translucent and cool, and I _blamed_ Jamie.  But eventually there was love, reconciliation, tenderness, yearning, and warmth where there had been blame. The devastation of our fire had left the ground fertile, ready to give life.

 When it was clear that the happening of Culloden was like a marble rolling down a slope (unstoppable, gaining momentum), I had known that the fire was going to come again. I felt the universe’s promise of a burn – the sounds and smells of the preparation for war, the set in Jamie’s jaw when he left meetings with the Bonnie Prince, the taste campfire thick in the air, the nervous energy of untrained boys and farmers, the obstinacy of Charlie’s entitlement signing death warrants for countless men.  When Jamie made love to me and sent me away I had perversely relished the pain of going through the stones because it meant that I wasn’t fully conscious of losing him.

When I stumbled into the future, gagging on the taste of bile and struggling to get air into my lungs, I was left with the feeling _again_. I collapsed, face pressed to cold ground and grass in my mouth and nostrils, a grassfire burning in my guts.  The only balm was the quiet flutter of a life in my too-thin, war-starved body.  Then months later came Brianna – happy, beautiful, red-haired Brianna.  She was a good baby. She slept well. She giggled uncontrollably when I’d kiss her fat legs and press my mouth to the creased rolls above her wrists. She simultaneously soothed the loss of her father and made me feel like I was singed raw along all of my edges. Bree was the new life after the fire.  

‘ _It was right to leave_ ,’ I would tell myself on the late nights and early mornings when Bree’s bowed pink mouth was suckling wetly at my breast and the city was quiet. ‘ _He meant to die on that battlefield_. _This is precisely where you’re meant to be… where he meant you to be_.’  

Bree would stare at me and blink slowly, drunk on breast milk and swooning for me.  I would quietly tell her of her Da, who was brave and handsome and stubborn and generous and gentle and powerful and damaged and who loved us both so much ( _before he even knew of you, Bree-Bee_ ). I told her that her Da was willing to sacrifice the blood that ran through his veins for her, for us both.

When I dug into Frank’s desk drawer before Bree’s birthday the certainty that I’d had about making the right choice ( _listening to Jamie, leaving the eighteenth century, screaming with aching lungs as I was torn through time and away from him_ ) dissolved.  The assumption that Jamie had died (a _fucking promise_ spoken from his mouth with certainty) had created a void in me, but it kept me alive in my own time.  However, the loss of that assumption left me reeling and changed the void into something unmanageable. The negative space between identifiable emotions caught fire. My skin blistered under the lack of feeling.

So here I was driving a rented vehicle the size of a boat. I was in Virginia, hundreds of miles from home.

Frank had Brianna as part of our informal custody arrangement reached on a handshake.  Having not yet been able to move into an apartment, Frank stayed with Bree in the home we used to share. Surprisingly, we had a civil conversation about keeping the changes in Bree’s life to a minimum. In the main, she would not have the disruption of sleeping in a hotel when he had her (even if she would find a hotel to be a welcome disruption). As much as I felt true hatred for another person for the first time, I could not handle Bree’s quiet pleas for him. Instead of staying in a hotel myself, though, I had gone to search for Jamie and Faith.

I smoked cigarettes without inhaling, attempting to tap ashes out the window far more often than was necessary, and checked the map compulsively. I needed to keep my hands busy or I’d rip my hair out. I was within three miles of Jamie’s final resting place.

I had pushed my body beyond exhaustion.

My brain and body fell headlong into the type of adrenaline kick that had kept my feet moving and hands productive on real battlefields.  

My heart went into overdrive when I arrived at the cemetery, a flat, well-maintained plot surrounded by black iron gates behind St. Benedict’s Catholic Church. Jamie’s bones, inside of clothes hundreds of years old, were inside of this place.  

My breath caught in a strangled sigh at a second realization.

Faith, my beautiful, devastating Parisian miracle was here, too. I felt the devastation as if it had been yesterday that the blood flowed from me, bringing her silently into a world where she would never take a single breath. She had been buried wrapped in white linen and had a small golden cross tucked into a hand. My breath caught like it was yesterday at the image.  Her small body was somewhere near.  

I thought of Brianna pulling gleefully at my hair as I kissed her goodbye, Frank lingering at the periphery watching us together. Faith did not live long enough to reach for me that way.  Maybe she wouldn’t have been that kind of baby – maybe she would have been so independent as to be nonplussed when left.  Maybe Bree, as fiercely independent as she was, had always been destined to be my baby who craved touch. I wondered if Faith would have been as easy a keeper as Brianna.

Hands shaking, I got out of the car and pulled leather gloves onto my hands. My first steps were tentative, but I quickly put purpose in my attempts to find the gravestone.

The tracing was burning a hole in my pocket.  My eyes scanned surnames on the stones. They were mostly Scots. My heart caught every time I saw the names “James” or “Fraser” or “MacKenzie.”  None of the stones marked the resting place Jamie shared with our daughter.

But it had to be here. I was singularly obsessed with finding the proof that Jamie died old ( _grey?, thinking of me, of the baby I had taken with me, of Faith?, his wits still about him?, his body softer and shoulders ever-so-slightly narrower from time and loss after loss after loss?_ ), that somewhere in history there was a mark of the two of us.  

We could not stop Culloden, but we could be memorialized together carved into stone for always. _She_ had to be here – proof that I had not imagined Paris, imagined the too-small baby without eyelashes and Jamie’s ears.

I slowed on my second circuit of the small cemetery.   _Where, where, where_.

My heart sped up on the third circuit of the cemetery.   _This is not something that just goes fucking missing._

By my fourth lap I was crying and breathless, my hands furiously swiping at the thin, almost-translucent dusting of snow on the ground to see if there were stones in the ground that I had missed.

“Ma’am, are you okay? Can I help you?” a voice eventually asked.  It was late afternoon.  The sky was just beginning to blaze orange and pink in the east.  I got off of my knees and reached into my pocket. I pulled out the tracing.

“Yes, please,” I responded, a little panicked. “I am looking for this grave… for James and Faith Fraser.” _Fraser_. I hadn’t said that out loud in a very long time. I did not say, “ _this is me, Claire, right here… I did not die then, I am here, now, breathing, heart beating, needing them_.”

The caretaker took the tracing from my hands and looked at it with a furrowed brow.  He pulled a scrap of dirty paper out of his pocket, scanning down with a fat thumb once, twice, three times. “I hate to tell you, but they ain’t here. I’ve only been here a few weeks, ma’am, but this is comprehensive.” He held up the list, shaking it.

“But this is St. Benedict’s? Do you have other plots?”

The caretaker, sensing desperation, carefully folded the tracing up and handed it back to me. “No ma’am.  This is the only one. There isn’t any other Catholic cemetery in, oh, twenty-five miles.”

I thanked him shakily, stuffing the tracing into my pocket and retreating to my car.  I sat and cried for a few minutes, fingers gripping the wheel, and went to my hotel. Once situated in my room, changed into warmer clothes and showered, I called Frank.  He answered on the second ring.

“You’re fucking scum, Frank,” I said as a greeting.  There was no need for pretense.

“Well hello to you too, Claire,” he responded coolly. He had known where I was going when I left Bree in his care early that morning. He had even marked my map for me, quiet and seemingly resigned to my mission. “Which of my misdemeanors do you need to talk about now?”

“The gravestone.”

“I do not catch your meaning.”

“It isn’t here, Frank.”

“I still don’t understand. You’re at St. Benedict’s in Millford, yes?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. I was going to force him to admit to whatever it was that he’d done, whatever hatred he had inside of himself for me that would leave a breadcrumb trail to _nothing_. “You need to use more words, Claire. I cannot keep up with what you’re accusing me of doing.”

“The gravestone,” I repeated again, fury raging in me. I tangled my hand around the telephone cord and gripped until it felt like it would leave indents in my palm. When he didn’t respond, I continued. “Did you make it up? How did you do it? Jamie and _Faith_ are _not_ buried here.”

He was silent. In the distance I could hear someone else’s conversation on the line; they were laughing.

“Faith is Bree’s sister, Frank. You understand that right? I don’t expect you to give a fuck about my life with Jamie, but you lied to me and it affects Bree, too.”

“Claire,” he said softly, the lilt from his voice. I fought the urge to say more, wanting to see where he could get on his own and what he would say.  “I loved you from the day I met you all the way until some other day that came only very, very recently. I would lay down my life for you, even now. I swear on Brianna that I did not make anything up. I was _there_. Six months ago when I went to the University of Virginia. I took a detour to see it in person. He was there in the ground. His… your daughter… was there.”

My heart slowed.

“Here, let me go to my office. I found his name on a grave registry. I made the tracing when I visited.” I heard the rustling of clothes and a soft whining from Brianna and a snort from the new puppy. I didn’t say anything, just listened to the ambient noise of the house and the soft babble of my baby girl.  He picked up a second receiver, his breath slightly faster. “Claire…”

“What?” I asked, my voice biting and tinged by a sourness I’d never heard. “It’s… not here either. I… did you take it? He was there… between a MacKenzie and an Acheson.”

I had known Frank long enough to know that in moments of confrontation. When his faults were laid bare Jamie could not _lie_. He could be angry, sometimes he would stutter, rake his hands through his hair, and worry his lower lip between his thumb and index finger. But he was not a liar in those moments.

“Claire, _he was there_. The bastard was there. I wanted to spit on his fucking grave.”  His words were dripping with a venom for a ruined life that I did not second guess.

By the time we hung up I had come around to believing Frank. I believed that he had seen Jamie’s grave but I also believed my own eyes. The Claire Randall before the stones would have thought Frank to be a liar. The Claire Fraser sitting on this bed in Virginia had seen enough to appreciate that she did not know even a sliver of the universe’s tricks and that it was futile to even try to understand.  

I rolled to my side on the hotel bed, staring at the wall and pulling my legs up to my chest.

I had a million questions.

There was the ever-present question from the last six years: could the past be changed? Our failure to stop Culloden could just mean that we were _wrong_ in our approach, not that history is in inevitability. Frank had seen the grave, he had a grave registry _somewhere_. This _was_ as shift.

Had Jamie made some choice that prevented him from coming to rest here in Virginia?

Had that change meant that he did not die an old man, surrounded by quilts in his bed?

If change was possible did that change mean that he would not try to meet in me three weeks?

Jamie’s words were embedded in my mind and on the tip of my tongue.  

_C., my Sassenach—Brittany, Fr., 1 Feb. ‘52. I pray that you will meet me at those Stones._

Although I was unable to grasp the physics of time travel, I had confirmed other things before setting off on this fool’s errand.  

One, there were stones in Brittany, France, laid out like fans and stacked in dolmens.  They were thousands of years old and surrounded by myth.  A pope who turned pagan soldiers to stone.  A Roman legion turned to stone by Merlin.   

Two, the stones were still standing despite the ravages of the war and the relentless hammering of the region with gunfire, mortars, bombs, and the lust for power and to exterminate entire populations. 

Three, there was lore of one set of the stones pulling people through time, sucking them back years and spitting them up again sometime later and babbling of the past, mad.

Four, there was a pagan holiday on February 2. Imbolc. 

I wondered if my research aligned with _whatever_ Jamie had learned hundreds of years earlier, whatever led him to leave a trail for me to follow.

Before leaving Brianna and Frank at the house, I had been deliberate. I was determined not to leave the same kind of paper trail that Frank had left that resulted in the tapestry of my life unraveling.

I had slipped a small stack of papers into my handbag, the carbon copy for check to an airline, the bank statement showing that I had shaved off a substantial portion of our savings account for cash, the passport I had received on an emergency basis for Brianna, tickets for Claire Elizabeth Randall and for Brianna Ellen Randall to Paris (leaving Boston on January 28, 1952), a letter confirming a hotel in Paris (January 29, 1952), a rental car, and a hotel confirmation for an inn in Brittany (January 30, 1952 through February 3, 1952).

I had made my decision and my decision was to _try_.


	5. Iron and Salt

**Chapter 5**

**_Iron and Salt_ **

**_January 30, 1952_ **

**_Brittany, Fr._ **

****

The drive from Paris to Brittany felt like it took a week.

In reality it was eight and a half hours over bumpy pavement with a lot of crackling French news radio in the background. It was only slightly more than white noise.  I only half listened ( _the Indochina War raging in Vietnam, French troops rudderless with their general ill from cancer, hundreds of men gone only since the new year_ ). I _knew_ war, even if it was spoken in French not with any number of English accents or a Highlander’s burr. War, violence kept my mind off of _other things_ ( _Jamie_ ) for short bursts of time – ninety seconds, a few minutes, sixty seconds.

But then I would be back. Which of his characteristics were immutable? What would have changed? 

In the short number of years we had been together ( _physically, not just an emotional noose stretched over time_ ), I had marveled by how little he had changed. Now, I realized that change happens slowly. An erosion of a jaw line to age and slight weight gain. The etching of lines around eyes and mouths the workings of thousands of laughs ( _when jointly sung out into the universe the lines just appear - the participants none the wiser_ ). A thinning of hair ( _the fingers curled into them, with a daily pressing of a lover’s mouth and head into a waiting flesh and lips unaware of lost volume_ ). A stretch mark streaking from hip to ribcage ( _a pregnancy he never saw to completion, the product of which squirmed and squealed and suckled from darker nipples on softer breasts_ ).

No, there would be things about Jamie that would be different, just as there were things about me that would be different. And we would revel in our time together exploring those differences, cataloging them for later retrieval.

Brianna’s mood swung wildly between poles during the drive – babbling, playing quietly with a doll, napping, asking whether dah-dee was going to meet us ( _I couldn’t answer_ ), attempting to wiggle into my lap ( _hold Bree-Bee, peas_ ), singing the alphabet (“ _now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me”_ ), crying about how hungry she was (she had recently picked up Frank’s overdramatic use of the word “ _starving_ ”) or how thirsty she was (“ _juice juice peas!”_ ) or how much she had to _peepee mama puh-lease_.  

As we neared Brittany, though, Brianna fell fast asleep, her face streaked with dry tears and her soft cheek, hot from a meltdown, pressed into my skirt.

With the silence occasioned by her slumber, the radio tuned low, my thoughts ran wild.  

The permutations of what could happen in Brittany were unrestrained by logic or physics or any reality I had known over the last few years. I did not know how I would survive if this did not work – if the promise of seeing Jamie again flickered out and died.

If Bree and I made it through the stones he ( _Jamie_ ) could be there or he could not be there. He would gather our daughter first, mumbling in Gaelic, maybe crying. Bree would cling to him, just knowing that she was _home_ and that _this man…_ well, she would just know that he was something special to her. ( _It was not fucking likely, but it was my fantasy, okay?_ ) And then Jamie would see _me_. I’d say something clever that I had not yet thought of and he would smirk, kiss me, and take us _somewhere_ ( _oh God, where?_ ) to be a family.

If I made it through and Bree did not Jamie would be there. I knew he would be waiting for me. At first he would smile. But then it would falter when he saw the panic written all over me. I would dive back through into the space between our times, probably not taking even a moment to kiss him or to run the backs of my fingers along his cheek like I’d wanted to for years. I doubted that I would even get much of a look at him.

I would scream: “ _Brianna, her name is Brianna; she is beautiful and I will tell her everything_ ” as I went back through to our daughter. Getting the name out was the first thing; everything else would just be a bonus. And I would either make it back to Brianna or I wouldn’t. I would live with guilt with either outcome – for giving Jamie something and then tearing it away ( _me_ ) or for leaving Brianna on that hill with no mother ( _again, me_ ).

If I was gone from 1952 forever, it would be as if I never existed. 

My red-hot blood would be smeared where I was raked across the boundaries of time. My screams would curdle and exist in a suspension over the constant buzzing.

If I had to immediately turn heel and come back through the stones to get our daughterwould either be back in my arms ( _with no Jamie_ ) or I would be a mother without without a daughter in another time.

If I was lost, Frank would find Brianna. I had left an obvious trail for him to follow if things went poorly. He would love her ( _ **continue**_ to love her, full heart and without reservation) even though he no longer loved me.

If neither Brianna nor I made it through the stones, and were instead stuck in 1952, I would have to live with these moments for the rest of my life. The dashing of hope, violently thrown upon the stones. The loss of Jamie for the second time. I wondered, vaguely, if the second time would be worse because there would be no “ _good-bye, my love_ ,” a final act of love to say “ _you mean everything to me_.”

The notion of Jamie coming through the stones barely registered other than to make me smirk. _Jamie_. Here. Cars and toilets, refrigerators and airplanes, manufacturing and clothing stores, televisions and radios, Coca-Cola and James Stewart. My listing of the _things_ in 1952 ended with two that were probably the most important: Claire Randall and Brianna Randall.

Knowing that Jamie was alive but was potentially unreachable felt like an insurmountable obstacle to living any sort of life. From what I had discovered in Frank’s desk and his belated revelation the morning he left our home, I had exactly one opportunity to make this reunion happen. I had one moment in which I knew with near certainty where in time and space Jamie Fraser would be.

I could find Jamie, be with him, if I could just get us _both_ to him.

I would not leave Brianna, even if it meant leaving the promise of being with Jamie. 

We were close to Brittany now.  And finding him was _almost_ _here_ and _almost_ _now_ ,in a town only a few dozen kilometers away.

I glanced down at our slumbering girl.  

Bree was warm and soft under my trench coat. She had her thumb sucked deep into her mouth, cheeks hollowed, and eyes cinched shut.  She looked more like me right now – a worried crease across her forehead, curly hair. But she _**was** _ Jamie – red hair, stubbornness, curiosity, unadulterated joy in discoveries.

I set my hand down over the coat, feeling the rise and fall of her small chest.  

She was a reminder to _live_ no matter what the outcome. She was half-Jamie and I owed it to him to see her through the years.

“You look so much like your Da, Bree-bee,” I whispered, taking some measure of comfort from her gentle breathing. “Sometimes when you look at me it’s like I’m looking straight at him and it scares the _hell_ out of me.”

Bree stirred slightly under my hand and I fell silent, waiting for her to wake.

When she didn’t, I continued.

“He is the bravest, most stubborn person I know… have known…. Like you.  He would die for you… for me… for us. I know him, Bree. He has never met you, but he has thought about you every day. He must wonder what you look like, whether you were a crier when you were just a baby, what your first words were. He is stoic and kind.  He is selfless.”

I swallowed, hard, recognizing I was thinking of Jamie ( _speaking_ of Jamie) in the present tense. Alive.  Breathing.  Waiting. Wanting.  Wondering.

“Jamie is a survivor and smart, so very smart. He can just look at me and _know_ what I’m thinking.  He can’t wink –”

I stopped and thought about Jamie attempting to wink for a moment, smiling a little despite myself –

“—and I don’t know if you’ll be able to either. He just kind of… stares… and blinks.”  

I stopped. The list of adjectives I had for describe Jamie was never-ending, but I was choked by tears.  

 _Jamie “ **is** ”_… **not** _Jamie “was_.”

When we arrived at the inn where we were staying, I peeled Bree off of my lap and slid her out of the car. She curled her face into my neck, her soft lips moving gently against my flesh. Her saliva-sticky thumb slipped under the neckline of my shirt.  

After we ate sandwiches, Bree whining and kicking her feet over the sweet pickles on hers ( _even after they were picked off_ ) we set off for the stones with directions from the innkeeper.  Bree was back to babbling in the seat next to me, whipping her doll in circles by its hair and cackling.  

I felt like I had a knife in my side.  

 _This was just a test_. It was only to see if this was even possible.

When we arrived at the stones, we walked up a short hill together. I could hear my heartbeat hammering away in my chest.  Bree must have taken something from my mood because she was quiet and calm, just coming along with me, her small hand tucked into mine. I would have been trembling if it hadn’t been for her fingers in mine giving me something to hold onto.

I heard them before I saw them, a buzzing between my ears, a thrum deep in my brain. I remembered that when I was little I would sit with refrigerator magnets at opposite ends of the table under my fingers.  I would draw them together until they pulled and pulled at each other.  I would resist them with my fingers, but eventually they would sleep free from the slight pressure of my fingerprints. This felt like that, only I was a magnet.  

I looked down at Bree, she was looking up at trees, smiling.  

“What sound do bees make, Bree?” I asked, approximating the sound with something accessible for her young vocabulary.

“BUZZZZZZZZ! BUZZZZZZ!” she exclaimed, pulling her hand out of mine and putting her hands on either side of her mouth and wiggling her fingers.

“Good girl! Yes.”  I smiled down at her, dropping a hand to her shoulder. “Do you hear the bees?”

She stopped where she stood, looking around. “Mama? Where?”

“The buzz, buzz, Bree. Where is it?”

Her tiny brow furrowed.  She looked so much like Jamie.

Her expression took me back to Jamie.

_“The buzzing. It’s so loud.” I had pleaded with him to come with me, to go back with me. I begged him and begged, crying, shaking, feeling sour in my stomach and down to the marrow in my bones. I had persisted: “You hear it, right. The buzzing?”_

_“I don’t hear anything, Claire.” He had nodded, his lips slightly turned up at the corners and his head shaking only slightly.  He had laid his hand on the mossy green film covering the stone._

_And… nothing._

I crouched, pulling my skirt up slightly so I could crouch to her level.  I took her by her upper arms, slightly more forcefully than I meant.  She did not react, apparently sensing the desperation in my voice and maybe a little scared of me for the first time. 

“How do you feel right now, sweetheart?”

“Feel good, mama.”  She nodded her head, her auburn curls bouncing and going almost strawberry blonde in the winter sun. She tried to raise a hand but my hold restricted her movement.  The look on her face - well, it was apparent that she did not have the sickness that I felt roiling in my guts.

I gathered her to my chest and nestled my face in her small neck, feeling the _thrum thrum thrum_ of her pulse on my lips.

 _Fuck_.

I had to keep trying.

“Let’s find bees, okay? It’s a game, lovey!” I released her and stood before she could see tears in my eyes.

The sound was almost unbearable a few meters closer to the stones – a violent humming.  It reminded me of when I had seen Metropolis in the theatre when I was young, frightened by the industrial scenes – loud, jarring, metallic, violent. But this was _constant_.

“Do you hear that?”

“Uhhuh, mama!” She grinned when I turned around, she was flapping her arms up and down.

“What sound does it make, lovey?” I asked, heart lifting and swallowing hard.

“TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!” She pointed a fat finger up at an imposing oak tree, its branches thick and weathered and strong. On a delicate limb sat a cardinal – the color of blood shocking against a backdrop of wispy clouds and watery sky.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

“What else, Bree-bee?” I bit my cheek until blood oozed from it like a lazy spring, coating my mouth in short viscous spurts that matched my heartbeat.  It was iron and salt on my tongue.

She stared at me blankly before she picked up a twig, waving it. She giggled when she waved it at the stones and announced: “ABBA-CUH-DABBA!”

_No._

One thing was clear to me.

If Bree couldn’t hear it, then she wouldn’t make it through.

I was spinning, all of the permutations of my reunion with Jamie Fraser in my head dwindling to one: I was never going to see him again.

She continued to shriek _ABBA-CUH-DABBA_ over and over again.  I steadied myself against the rough tree trunk, the bark gritty under my palm. I was bleeding - my tongue leaking a thin trickle of blood. I spat on the ground, spraying the half-melted snow with a brilliant crimson.  The buzzing sound. _That sound_.

After a moment, I composed myself and walked to Bree. I picked her up, kissing her winter wind-whipped cheek, and walked to the stones slowly.

I lifted my hand, letting it hover just an inch away from the ice-slicked surface for a moment. I felt like I was going to be sucked through. Torn from my daughter. Processed. Spat back out _sometime_ that was not my present.

“Hold your hand up, lovey,” I whispered, voice tripping over the words.  I demonstrated for her. My entire body was shaking, breath caught in my throat. “Like this.”

“‘Dis, mama?”

“Yes, baby, very good. Now… really slow… touch it.”

She ignored the instruction.  Her hand bolted forward, slapping the stone solidly. 

 _Nothing happened._  

I stepped back once, twice, three times, holding her. 

My grip was too tight, but I had to hold her in a vain hope that if I were to be sucked through she would come with me.

My mind stopped. 

My heart raced. 

My palms went clammy where they touched her. 

My throat was flooded with the taste of stomach acid.

My _brain_ was throbbing against the confines of my skull. 

My body arced towards the stones, hip-first, drawn to fall and fall and fall and spin until boneless.

I set Brianna down on the ground, mumbling for her to go see if the cardinal was still there.

I vomited into the watery snow – sandwich and acid, sweet pickles and Coca-Cola. 

I vomited until my sides ached and my belly felt like it was pulled taught as a drum, rebelling against dry heaving. I steadied myself on the tree.

Brianna was never going to make it through.

It was only then that I started crying.

_What am I going to do?_


End file.
